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Take It Back To Old School

I love everything old school. I still listen to the Nas album ‘I Am’ more than any other album out now. I still watch Coming To America more than any other film that is out now.

Some would say I’m stuck in the past.. but I don’t care. I love the old school.

As much as I am constantly learning new things about fitness, the truth is, there really is nothing new under the sun.

Since the dawn of civilisation, early man has been running, sprinting, climbing, lifting heavy stuff, and generally doing all the things people nowadays don’t.

It’s only in recent history that training has been confined to one hour a day at the local ‘gym’. While our scientific knowledge of training is leaps and bounds ahead of anything we’ve had in the past, we are lazier and more uninspired than ever.

‘Old school’ forms of training, like climbing ropes, running up hills, swinging sledgehammers or lifting odd objects like rocks have been cast by the wayside and deemed not good enough by the fitness industry.

Instead, ‘health club’ memberships and shiny exercise machines have been given priority.

These basic forms of training will give you honest, real world athletic strength and conditioning. The main price you have to pay is sweat.

Doing 3 sets of 8 on the leg press in an air-conditioned gym press is nice and all, but it will never beat the feeling of running up a steep hill in the baking sun, chest heaving and legs filling with acid. That’s real, raw and old school at it’s finest. And it’s what we were made to do.

However, I’m not shitting on barbells, machines, or gyms at all. I just think that we shouldn’t be so quick to write off tried-and-tested methods that have been around for centuries in some cases. By combining the old and new school, we can get the best of both worlds.

This is a clip of a recent sprint session I did.

Here was the fancy set and rep scheme we used. Run up the big hill. Walk down. Repeat until fed up. (Obviously this was after a thorough warm up – see, we still can’t neglect the science part!).

Look at the best fighter in the world during his era, Floyd Mayweather. Here he is chopping wood in preparation for the biggest fight of his life against Manny Pacquaio. Raw, old school, pure hard work. And as always, he came in to the fight in impeccable physical condition.

I’m currently lifting 4 days a week and sprinting on the 5th day. That fifth day is all about having fun and just doing something primal, and I’m loving it. Currently very fit.

Try it out guys, and let me know what your favourite form of old school training is.